Musettes and Merveilles - Ensemble Pompadour

Step inside the intimate musical world of eighteenth-century France, where aristocratic friends gathered to make music for pleasure, surrounded by the glittering interiors and gardens of Versailles.
Ensemble Pompadour brings together Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba), Nicholas Pollock (theorbo), Simon Rickard (musette) and special guest Belinda Paul (baroque oboe and musette) for a programme of rarely heard French Baroque music. With works by Boismortier, the Hotteterres, Philidor, Marais and Lully, the music evokes the elegant, playful world of the fête champêtre — aristocrats delighting in pastoral fantasies of shepherds, shepherdesses, dancing and music-making.
At the centre of this distinctive sound world is the baroque musette, a tiny and extraordinarily fashionable bagpipe whose two chanters allow it to play two melodies simultaneously. Once beloved by the French aristocracy, its delicate, unmistakable sound appears alongside the rich colours of theorbo, viola da gamba, and oboe.
From Boismortier’s charming Balets de Village to Lully’s dazzling dance music, Ensemble Pompadour invites you into a rarefied inner circle of French Baroque music — intimate, elegant and thoroughly charming.